The BurmaNet News: July 14, 1998 (P

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The BurmaNet News: July 14, 1998
Issue #1048 Part 1 of 2

HEADLINES:
==========
(Part 1)
MAINICHI: TENSIONS RISING IN POWER STRUGGLE 
BKK POST: BURMA TO CRACK DOWN ON REBELS 
THE GLOBE AND MAIL (CANADA): RAPE OF ETHNIC WOMEN 
ASIAWEEK: "WE KNOW WE HAVE TO GO" 
THE NATION: BURMA SOCCER FANS FEAR POWER FAILURE 
(Part 2)
NLOM: NIGERIAN MILITARY DELEGATION CONCLUDES VISIT 
BKK POST: BURMA GROWING 
ABSDF: PRISONER DEVELOPS PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
THE WASHINGTON POST (EDITORIAL): COURAGE IN BURMA 
FEER: ... BUT STAY ON GUARD 
BKK POST: TIME TO SPEAK OUT
THE NATION: THAI PROPOSAL NEEDS ASEAN SUPPORT 
ASIAWEEK: BURMESE EXILES ON THE MOVE 
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MAINICHI DAILY NEWS
13 July, 1998 by Shinichiro Hori 

BANGKOK -- Trouble appears to be brewing in Burma. In a move bound to
irritate the ruling military, the National League for Democracy (NLD) has
begun setting up a shadow Cabinet to prepare for a future transfer of power
from the present junta.

At the end of last month, the biggest opposition party, led by Aung San Suu
Kyi, called on the ruling [State] Peace and Development Council ([S]PDC) to
convene a Parliament postponed since elections in 1990.

Although the National League for Democracy has been demanding a national
assembly since the military seized power, this time they have set a date
Aug. 21 for the opening of the Parliament. In a predictable response, the
military has begun a crackdown since the NLD issued its demand, detaining
more than 50 NLD parliamentarians, according to the All Burma Students
Democratic Front, and banning others living in rural areas from traveling
outside their local regions.

The military government, formerly known as the State Law and Order Council,
also prevented Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of the National League
for Democracy from visiting the suburbs of the capital, Rangoon, on July 7.

Until now, the [S]PDC has tried to weaken the NLD's organization by
arresting its leaders and supporters for minor offenses.

However, there are some glimmers of hope. Since July last year, the first
secretary of the [S]PDC, Khyn Nyunt, has held unofficial talks with the top
leader of the NLD.

These tentative steps toward an accommodation between the two sides could
be in danger after the NLD latest move.

The flash point is likely to be a demonstration organized by the NLD to
commemorate the anniversary of the death in 1947 of Aung San Suu Kyi's
father, Gen. Aung San, who led the nation to independence.

The NLD also plans a nationwide demonstration on Aug. 8 to call for the
transfer of power to Aung San Suu Kyi's party.

Events in Indonesia and the Asian currency crisis have also affected both
sides.

The fate of Indonesia former President Suharto, who stepped down in May
after massive public protests, has emboldened the NLD to demand a transfer
of power based on the results of the 1990 elections.

But Burma's generals, who modeled their administration on that of Suharto
and his Golkar Party, have retreated back into their old, repressive ways
as a result of Suharto demise, diplomatic sources said.

Could Burma follow Indonesia's example?

The situation is certainly volatile. Since last year, the value of Burma
currency has halved and the cost of living has skyrocketed.

Even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is pressuring the Burmese
authorities to change, with a high-level official in Thailand's Foreign
Ministry recently warning Burma that political instability retards economic
development.

The NLD won 392 seats out of a possible 485 eight years ago, but the
military, which took power in 1988, ignored the results. 

****************************************************************

THE BANGKOK POST: BURMA TO CRACK DOWN ON REBELS
13 July, 1998 by Cheewin Sattha Mae Hong Son 

Burma will this week launch attacks against ethnic minority rebels along
its border with Thailand.

Soldiers will be sent to the area opposite Ban Ae Ko in Mae Hong Son's Pang
Ma Pha district to crack down on the Shan State Army and the Wa and Muser
groups. All three have been fighting the Rangoon government, said a source.

The Shan State Army is led by Harn Ka who commands around 50 guerrillas.
The group has reportedly been training along the border near Pang Ma Pha
and Pai districts in Mae Hong Son. The Shan State Army plans to use
soldiers based with Khun Sa's former Mong Tai Army to fight Rangoon forces. 

****************************************************************

THE GLOBE AND MAIL (CANADA): RAPE OF ETHNIC WOMEN JUST ANOTHER STRATEGY FOR
BURMESE ARMY 
4 July, 1998 by Dennis Bernstein and Leslie Kean 

Special to The Globe and Mail

The two Akha girls, abducted from their rural Burmese village by government
soldiers and forced to serve as  porters of military equipment, could not
have imagined the brutality they would face.  

The two -- 15-year-old Mi Au and 16-year-old Mi She -- were "happy healthy
girls" before the soldiers came,  the village headman of the Akha hill
tribe in Burma's eastern highlands told Amnesty International.  "When they
returned, their faces and skin were yellow. The two of them had been raped
continually for six nights by two or three men each night, including the
soldiers' commander." 

Despite the repeated sexual assaults, the London-based human-rights
organization says, the teens were forced to work all day. "After their
release," the headman said, "the two girls didn't sleep, didn't eat and
eventually just died."
In the decade since it seized power and renamed the country Myanmar,
Burma's military has become increasingly dependent on the use of forced
labour and torture to maintain that power, build the country's
infrastructure, and carry out its war against stubborn resistance by ethnic
minorities.  Evidence is increasing that the Burmese army is using another
tool of war against minority populations: rape.

The fate of the two Akha girls is not uncommon.

The U.S. State Department reported this year that Burmese troops "continued
to impress women for military porterage duties, and there were many reports
of rape of ethnic minority women by soldiers." According to the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on Burma, government troops have been abducting
"increasing numbers of women, including young girls and the elderly" and
subjecting them to rape and other abuses. The Burmese Women's Union told UN
women's conference in Beijing in 1995  that "women have been raped in an
organized and systematic way" by the army.

A civil lawsuit filed by legal-rights groups in a U.S. federal court in
1996 targeted the Burmese military junta and two oil companies -- Unocal
Corp., then based in Los Angeles, and Total SA of France -- for abuses
allegedly committed during construction of a natural gas pipeline in Burma,
charging that "girls and women have been raped in the presence of family
members."  The court, which ruled last year that Unocal and Total could be
held liable for rapes committed by their military partner, will hear the
case next year; the junta was dropped as a defendant because the court said
it had no jurisdiction over it.

The UN Commission on Human Rights says women most likely to be raped are
"refugees, internally displaced women and women belonging to ethnic
minorities or the political opposition." Rapes by the military typically
occur during raids on villages; when women are abducted for forced labor;
during encounters with victims of forced relocations in the jungle; and in
coerced marriages.

****

Rape is systematically being used by Burma's military as part of a policy
of "ethnic cleansing," according to interviews with human-rights workers
and exiled pro-democracy officials. Bolstering those contentions is a new
report by EarthRights International, a legal-rights group based in
Washington and Thailand, that accuses Burma's military of "the savage
domination of women outside the scope of acceptable wartime conduct."

The Shan village of Kaeng Kham in Kunhing township was one target.
According to a 1996 report by the Thai-based Shan Human Rights Foundation,
sexual attacks at Kaeng Kham often occurred at night after the village men
left for work at a local logging company.  "While the men are away,
Sergeant Hla Phyu and his men repeatedly raped the women, going from house
to house. Every adult woman in this small village has been raped."

"When soldiers rape women," said Shan ethnic leader Sao Ood Kesi in a
telephone interview from Thailand, "there is no action taken against them.
It's understood that they have permission from their officers to rape the
women. Sometimes they kill the women afterwards." 

He provided a list of 83 rape cases that occurred in Shan state last year
for which investigators documented the dates, places, victims' and parents'
names, and battalion numbers and names of the officers who committed the
rapes.  Many of these women also were murdered.

A 1997 report by the same foundation documents the murder of dozens of
ethnic women and girls after they were gang-raped by Burmese soldiers. It
says 120 troops led by Captain Htun Mya found 42 women and 57 men hiding in
the forest in Kunhing township. The women were raped for two days and two
nights, then all 99 villagers were reportedly killed.

In April, Amnesty International reported that a 30-year-old mother, Nang
Ing, was raped by three soldiers, who then poured boiling water over her.
She died three days later of burns "from her neck to her feet."  In another
village, Naing Mai was raped by soldiers for five days. Amnesty, citing
testimony by farmers hiding in the area, says "she was then covered with
pieces of wood and burned to death." 

Thaung Tun, deputy chief of mission at the Burmese embassy in Washington,
denies the allegations of widespread rape. "It is hardly possible for rape
to occur in Myanmar on a policy basis. Maybe on an individual basis. But if
it happens there are laws in place and people would be punished." 

****

Many of Burma's soldiers are teen-agers, often abducted by the army.
According to EarthRights, they are given little food, forbidden contact
with their families, and forced to beat each other for punishment. Abused
physically and humiliated every day, the young recruits are set loose among
the ethnic minorities they have been indoctrinated to believe are "the
people's enemy" and "internal destructionists."

Many ethnic leaders and pro-democracy activists claim that the violence
against women is directly related to the military's goal of wiping out all
ethnic resistance, even if it means genocide against a particular minority.

One document which has been widely circulated but whose authenticity has
not been definitively verified appears to lend credence to the claims that
rape is a conscious tool of war in Burma. Marked "top secret" and dated
only a few weeks after the military takeover in 1988, the document is
addressed to "All Great Ruling Burmans" and outlines a policy of "blood
mixing" and "Burmanization" of ethnic minorities. (Burmans represent
two-thirds of Burma's population.)  The document says "the easiest way to
implement these ideas is to occupy [marry or impregnate] women who are not
Burman," for which it offers a financial reward. "We must deviously attack
those who are not Burman in economic as well as social ways." 

Burmese opposition leader Sein Win, who heads the Washington-based Burmese
government in exile, believes the document originated in the defence
ministry's department of psychological warfare. "Regardless of the source
or intent of this document, it accurately represents an ethnic cleansing
policy of the Burmese military," he says. "There is no doubt that the
widespread rapes by troops are fuelled by the policies expressed in this
document."

U Bo Hla Tint, a member of the government in exile, says he was present in
Burma when officials in Karen state heard the text of the document during
routine monitoring  of radio communications between two Burmese military
commanders. Ka Hsaw Wa, a veteran Karen human-rights investigator who
organizes fact-finding missions for Human Rights Watch, says he encountered
the "Burmanization" document in the Shan, Karen and Karenni areas, where
his sources retrieved it from Burman soldiers and outposts.

Villagers in the ethnic areas also have encountered the document. One Karen
woman told Betsy Apple, a lawyer with EarthRights and author of its rape
report, that she once had in her possession a letter that told Burmese
soldiers they would be paid for marrying ethnic women and that "your blood
must be left in the village."

"The policy does not just apply to the Shan women, as it says in the
letter, but to other ethnic groups as well," Ms. Apple said in a telephone
interview from New York. "It seems to have originated from the commander
level, but we're not sure how high."

Even more bizarre than the posturing of the letter by the "Great Ruling
Burmans" to "diligently convince Shan women to gradually bow to
Burmanization," is the common belief among soldiers that they can win over
ethnic women by giving them sufficient sexual pleasure to induce them to
fall in love. 

The technique of inserting metal or glass balls in the penises of young
soldiers has become popular "because women can get more feeling" one
soldier reported. "I interviewed many former soldiers who actually showed
me their penises with the balls inserted," said Ka Hsaw Wa, the
Washington-based Karen rights investigator. "It is a common practice. Even
if the women are raped, the soldiers believed that they would come back for
more because of the pleasure."

It is not known how widespread this practice is. The soldiers are not
required to undergo the surgical procedure, which is done without
anesthetic, but, according to Ka Hsaw Wa, they are "indirectly encouraged"
to do it. One soldier told investigators that half the members of his
battalion had been implanted with the metal balls.

The EarthRights report concludes that rape is being used to change the
ethnic balance in Burma. "By forcibly impregnating ethnic minority women,
Burmese soldiers can increase the majority population through more Burman
births [the offspring is considered to bear the ethnicity of the father
only] and decrease the number of ethnic minorities through death resulting
from sexually transmitted diseases, botched abortions, suicides, and actual
injuries from the rapes." 

* * * *

Jennifer Green, staff lawyer with the New York-based Center for
Constitutional Rights, is convinced that the Burmese military is guilty of
crimes against humanity as defined by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The
Hague. The tribunal, set up for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has
declared rape a war crime. 
"The facts presented in [the EarthRights report] indicate that these acts
of violence against women are both widespread and systematic, that there is
a pattern of rape, and that civilians are targeted for political reasons or
because they are part of a certain ethnic group," says Ms. Green, who is a
co-counsel in the lawsuit against Unocal and Total. 

"There is a growing acceptance that rape is not just a form of humiliating
treatment but is an extreme form of violence and should be regarded as
torture." 
Activists are urging that the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against
Women to investigate the claims of systematic rape. "Since people have
documented this happening in Burma, it is critically important to secure
accountability for it." says Regan Ralph, acting director of the women's
rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "These allegations should be brought
to the attention of any international mechanism that could weigh in."

Dennis Bernstein, associate editor at California's Pacific News Service, is
the producer of the newsmagazine program "Flashpoints" on KPFA radio in the
San Francisco Bay Area. Leslie Kean is co-author of Burma's Revolution of
the Spirit and director of  Burma Project USA (a non-profit organization
founded in 1991 to increase awareness about Burma) in San Rafael, Calif. 

****************************************************************

ASIAWEEK: "WE KNOW WE HAVE TO GO" 
17 July, 1998 by Senior Correspondent Roger Mitton in Bangkok 

The Deputy PM talks politics and economics.

Vice-Admiral Maung Maung Khin is Deputy Prime Minister of Myanmar and
chairman of the Myanmar Investment Commission. His key role these days is
to drum up new investment for his resource-rich, but impoverished nation --
a tough task at any time for an undemocratic pariah state, but even harder
given the regional crisis. He discussed investment and other issues with
Senior Correspondent Roger Mitton in Bangkok. Excerpts:

ON FOREIGN INVESTMENT:
The financial turbulence hit us hard because most of our investments, about
50%, are from the region. But various types have come in recently, some
small, like a recent Japanese project to make cosmetics. And a recent
Chinese investment in cotton. They will be doing the spinning and producing
cloth from the yarn. We are having problems with some Western countries,
some sanctions -- although investors are still coming in. Not from the
U.S., but some from Europe. We are keen for investments in the production
sector, where manufacturing companies can utilize our natural resources.

Many investors have already come in, especially in textiles, construction
and hotels -- in fact, at the moment we have more than enough new hotels.
Most activity is in foodstuffs, as well as natural gas, oil, fisheries and
mining. Copper production will start in two months.

ON ECONOMIC GROWTH:
We are keeping to the growth target of 6.4%. Last year, we managed 5.7%. It
is possible, if things remain as they are and we continue working hard
toward that end. And that's despite sanctions and the fact that we don't
get help from the IMF or the World Bank. We have to struggle. But remember,
things are not the same for us as for some of our neighbors. Our economy is
much smaller than Thailand's, for example.

So you can't compare. And there's not much capital market activity in our
country. We don't have any foreign banks operating and we don't have a
stock exchange. So there is less impact from the crisis. We are an
agricultural country, so we are trying to export more from that sector. And
soon the oil and gas will be flowing.

ON MYANMAR'S INTERNATIONAL IMAGE:
We do what we can, but there are limitations on our side. We can't spend
millions on that. We are paupers. But we are also doing our bit on the
Internet. New investors may be discouraged by the accusations of some
Western powers, but those who come in can see for themselves what the
potential is. We can't just open up, you know, like other countries.

We are doing it in stages as much as we can, but not totally. Since we took
over in 1988, we have gradually opened up, especially in the economic
sector. Now we are in ASEAN, we have a good relationship with other member
states, and our people feel part of the region. But due to external forces,
our state of affairs hasn't improved as much as we would have liked.

ON TRANSFERRING POWER:
What we are doing is for the betterment of future generations. But it takes
time, as historically it did for other countries like England or America.
They did not get democracy at once. It took many, many years. We have not
assumed the seat of power forever. We know we have to go at one time or
another. We have achieved stability to a certain degree, but not 100% yet.

That's why we must finish our task. Then, once the new Constitution is in
place and elections can be held, we will hand power to whoever is elected.
When, I cannot predict. It partly depends upon those people who are
pressing us. If they want us to do it early, hand over power as soon as
possible, they should take away their sanctions and embargoes and let
things work out. They are slowing the process.

****************************************************************

THE NATION: BURMA SOCCER FANS FEAR POWER FAILURE 
13 July, 1998 

RANGOON -- For many soccer fans in Burma, the main question yesterday was
not who would win the World Cup final between France and Brazil, but where
to watch the game on television without fear of a power failure.

Due to frequent blackouts recently in the capital, soccer fans -- and
gamblers -- have been gathering at homes of friends with power generators
to watch the late-night broadcasts.

The government says the power shortage, noticeable since May, is due to low
levels of water in hydroelectric dams caused by last year's drought. In one
relatively affluent residential neighbourhood, electricity has been
supplied on an eight hours-on, eight hours-off basis for the past few days.

In an evident effort to keep people happy, however, the government has
managed to supply most if not all areas with electricity late at night,
enabling them to watch live World Cup broadcasts on state television.

Showing the games is also a special for state television, since it usually
stops broadcasting at 10 pm.

The broadcasts were presumably paid for by the sponsors of the broadcasts,
London cigarettes, a brand belonging to the British tobacco company Rothmans.

The government of Burma, has economic problems and can ill afford to spend
the money needed to secure broadcast rights.

Some business-minded people meanwhile run small "video halls," charging
30-60 kyats (US$0.075-0.15 at free market prices) for each game. Coffee
shops near these video halls, normally closed at such hours, do brisk
business before and after the matches.

Roadside vendors also have been doing good business selling posters of
soccer stars fetching 100 kyat apiece.
****************************************************************

end Part 1